Similar Lifestyles

In his report, Women and Men at Ð"‡atalhÐ"¶yÐ"јk, Ian Hodder investigated the roles women played in early agricultural societies, (about nine thousand years ago), and defended his theory that both men and women played similar roles in early agricultural societies with his findings from the Ð"‡atalhÐ"¶yÐ"јk site. This report will summarize Hodder’s Women and Men at Ð"‡atalhÐ"¶yÐ"јk and briefly discuss the strength of his argument.

Ð"‡atalhÐ"¶yÐ"јk was a town of 8,000 people crammed within 26 acres that existed nine thousand years ago. It is in fact the largest known Neolithic settlement and was first excavated by James Mellaart in 1961. Perhaps the most interesting characteristic of this town is that it had no streets. People would get from place to place by walking on the roofs and would enter the houses down a stairway from the roof. Although Ð"‡atalhÐ"¶yÐ"јk isn’t the earliest agricultural settlement, the size and the elaborate art have always made it a key topic in discussions regarding early farmers and their way of life.

A long tradition in European thought was that most of these societies were matriarchies. That is, women were the leaders and inheritance was passed from mothers to daughters. However, Hodder believes that excavations in the 1990s show that women and men participated in similar lifestyles.

The first important point is that women and men ate the same food. Isotropic analysis of the human skeletons and inspection of teeth prove this. Another important point is that smoke would build up in the house and because of the lack of ventilation, soot would reside their lungs. Upon analyzing the ribs of both males and females, it was noted that there was no significant difference in the amount of soot between the males and females. Therefore both sexes spent approximately the same amount of time in the house. It is also interesting to note that Hodder states men were predominately hunters and females were predominately